<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <!-- for emacs: -*- coding: utf-8 -*- --> <!-- Apache may like this line in the file .htaccess: AddCharset utf-8 .html --> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 plus MathML 2.0 plus SVG 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/2002/04/xhtml-math-svg/xhtml-math-svg-flat.dtd" > <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"> <head><title>null -- the unique member of the empty class</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../../../Macaulay2/Style/doc.css"/> </head> <body> <table class="buttons"> <tr> <td><div><a href="_nullary__Methods.html">next</a> | <a href="_not__Implemented.html">previous</a> | <a href="_nullary__Methods.html">forward</a> | <a href="_not__Implemented.html">backward</a> | up | <a href="index.html">top</a> | <a href="master.html">index</a> | <a href="toc.html">toc</a> | <a href="http://www.math.uiuc.edu/Macaulay2/">Macaulay2 web site</a></div> </td> </tr> </table> <hr/> <div><h1>null -- the unique member of the empty class</h1> <div class="single"><h2>Description</h2> <div>When it is the value of an expression entered into the interpreter, the output line doesn't appear. Empty spots in a list are represented by it.<p/> It is the only member of the class <a href="___Nothing.html" title="the empty class">Nothing</a>, which strictly speaking, ought to have no members at all.<p/> An <a href="_if.html" title="condition testing">if</a> expression with no <a href="_else.html" title="condition testing">else</a> clause returns <a href="_null.html" title="the unique member of the empty class">null</a> when the predicate is false.<p/> Various routines that prepare data for printing convert <a href="_null.html" title="the unique member of the empty class">null</a> to an empty string.<table class="examples"><tr><td><pre>i1 : x = {2,3,,4} o1 = {2, 3, , 4} o1 : List</pre> </td></tr> <tr><td><pre>i2 : net x o2 = {2, 3, , 4}</pre> </td></tr> <tr><td><pre>i3 : toString x#2 o3 = null</pre> </td></tr> <tr><td><pre>i4 : peek x o4 = {2, 3, null, 4}</pre> </td></tr> </table> </div> </div> <div class="waystouse"><h2>For the programmer</h2> <p>The object <a href="_null.html" title="the unique member of the empty class">null</a> is <a href="_null.html" title="the unique member of the empty class">null</a>.</p> </div> </div> </body> </html>